Using data from across the Stripe network, we’ve developed a machine learning system that evaluates charges in real-time and blocks those that are almost certainly fraudulent. By analyzing hundreds of different characteristics pertaining to each payment, these algorithms have already shielded businesses on Stripe from millions of attempted fraudulent charges.

Starting today, you can help improve these models. By letting us know when we’ve missed a charge that you believe to be fraudulent, or declined one that you think is legitimate, you can help train a model that’s optimized for your business. This ensures that the protection you receive will get better over time.

In practice, it’s very simple. In the dashboard, you can now:

Report and refund charges you believe to be fraudulent—just follow the “Report fraudulent payment” link when viewing a charge.

Mark as safe charges that Stripe blocked as suspected fraud. Charges we believe to be fraudulent will appear with a status of “Blocked” in the payments list and have a prominent message on the payment detail page. If you mark one of these charges as safe, you can retry it—we will not attempt to block it again.

There’s also equivalent functionality available in the API—check out the documentation for more details.

Over time, businesses on Stripe should not have to think about fraud and disputes. By enabling this feedback loop—between you and other businesses built on Stripe on the one hand, and our fraud detection infrastructure on the other—we’re confident that we’ll be able to deliver significant improvements in the future.

If you have any feedback or suggestions on these tools, or other thoughts about how we could better help you block fraud, please drop me a line.